


so gather up your jackets and move it to the exits (i hope you have found a friend)

by Emileesaurus



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Drift Side Effects, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 19:16:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20120287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emileesaurus/pseuds/Emileesaurus
Summary: He thinks of grey seas and salt air. Metal giants and voices echoing in steel corridors. Hazmat tape down the center of a laboratory. Unearthly horrors bursting from the deep. Rock music and vending machine food at two o'clock in the morning, hoping desperately for a breakthrough that would save them all. Standing at the edge of the abyss with the last man he had ever thought he would befriend, and the only one he'd ever truly trusted.How can he do anything else, after all of that?





	so gather up your jackets and move it to the exits (i hope you have found a friend)

**Author's Note:**

> A quick little post-movie scene, because I'll never really be over these two.

"I think I just put myself out of a job," Newton says. He's in their laboratory, staring up at the kaiju models dangling from the ceiling over his half of the room with an expression that Hermann can't quite put a name to. 

Hermann glances up, following Newton's gaze up to the two plastic titans, frozen in eternal combat. There's a metaphor to be made here, but he's too exhausted for it. They'd saved the world this morning, and now they would have to figure out what to do with it. His chest aches, but whether it's sympathy or residual emotions from the drift or simply his own odd sense of melancholy, he can't begin to guess. He isn't entirely certain that he wants to know.

"Nonsense," he replies, leaning on his cane. 

"Is it? Is it nonsense, Hermann?" There's a desperate, shrill edge to Newton's voice as he turns to look at him, wide-eyed and gesticulating broadly like he might make up for Hermann's stillness. "Because unless we've both seriously screwed up here, they just killed the last kaiju anyone's ever gonna see. And that's it for us, man. It's over." Through what remains of the Drift, Hermann can feel the anxious energy in him, humming like a live wire and ready to snap. He tries not to take it for his own. 

"You've just helped save the world," Hermann says, as calmly as he can manage. "You'll have interviews, television appearances. More awards than you can count. Even a book, if you can find the patience."

"Oh, ha ha."

Hermann continues undaunted. "You'll have your pick of universities, of course, if you want to go back to teaching. And there are always lecture tours. You'll find work, Newton. More than you could possibly have time for."

"That's not what I mean, and you know it." Newton shakes his head and looks back up at the kaiju, and he sounds so weary and sad that Hermann forgets for a moment that they're the victors.

"No," Hermann sighs at last. "I suppose it isn't."

Newton slumps into a chair at one of his empty workstations, his head in his hands, fingers curling in the dark mess of his hair. "What am I gonna do?"

Hermann has no idea.

What had any of them dreamed about before the war? He can't remember, and he knows it doesn't truly matter. They aren't those people anymore. 

The thought of leaving is disquieting.

He knows the Shatterdome. Every floor, every room, every inch. He can know where people are by the way their voices echo in the halls. He tells time by the announcements over the public address system. He hears the resonant clicking of his cane against the tiles like an extension of himself.

For once in his miserable life, he's found somewhere that he actually belongs. He can't admit it—he won't allow himself that weakness, even now, even after what's just happened between them, what's still happening along their transformed mental pathways—but he knows how Newton feels. Neither one of them had ever really fit anywhere else.

He thinks of grey seas and salt air. Metal giants and voices echoing in steel corridors. Hazmat tape down the center of a laboratory. Unearthly horrors bursting from the deep. Rock music and vending machine food at two o'clock in the morning, hoping desperately for a breakthrough that would save them all. Standing at the edge of the abyss with the last man he had ever thought he would befriend, and the only one he'd ever truly trusted.

How can he do anything else, after all of that?

Hermann hesitates for what he's sure is far too long, but eventually, he reaches out to put a hand on Newton's shoulder. It's a strange thought, that the two of them had been inside each other's heads not twenty-four hours ago, and yet here he was, unsure whether something as objectively simple as this would be welcome.

Newton looks up at him, eyes wide under his cracked lenses— 

_ ( surprise, relief, did he really just ) _

—and when the wave of emotion hits him, there's some small comfort in knowing that they're both entirely out of their depth. 

"You and I may be the smartest men alive," says Hermann, and that much, at least, he is completely certain of. "I daresay we'll think of something."

"Well," Newton replies with a scoff and a roll of his eyes that's somehow reassuring, "if you daresay so." He kicks the chair back from the desk, and goes spinning in it. "Closing time," he croons, almost unbearably off-key, "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here..."

"Ah," Hermann replies, feeling a satisfaction that could be either Newton's or his own. "So wrote the philosopher Semisonic. 'Every new begining comes from some other beginning's end.'"


End file.
